Special Happens

David Doe, Autism Whisperer – Full Bio

David’s bio is unique and full of life lessons and inspiration in itself. For that reason, this page is dedicated to David’s Full Bio.

David Doe was dumped in a boys home run by the Salvation Army at age eleven. By thirteen he was an orphan that had been frequently abused by both adults and other bullies that lived at the home. After taking one last public beating from his biology teacher at sixteen, he left school and started out life on his own. Homeless and alone at seventeen, David realized work meant survival. He took this theory and hyper focused on work and it wasn’t uncommon for him to have three or more jobs at one time.

At eighteen he tasted a new found freedom and saw the world as a playground. Naive of any dangers, he set out to explore planet earth. In his travels he became fascinated with Asia and Japan in particular. Within eighteen months he had a very good grasp of not only the language but, the culture and was living much like a Japanese person. By twenty five David had embraced the Japanese work ethic and had become a true workaholic, working eighteen hours a day, six and seven days a week. At one point he was holding five jobs.

David had not learned to say no when it came to work and almost lost his life to exhaustion by the end of the eighties. This would also be the end of his Neurotypical life as he could no longer pretend there was nothing wrong with him. Nor did he have the strength to be what others wanted him to be any longer. He was forced to be himself for the first time. In the early nineties, he started his life over with the help of medical intervention. He now realized he had to deal with P.T.S.D. and Disassociation Disorder on top of something else still yet to be diagnosed.

David lived in Denver, Colorado for about fifteen years where he got an education and became a certified nurses assistant. This passion came from his love for nurses since he spent so much of his younger years in and out of the hospital with an unknown seizure disorder. David made a name for himself throughout the nursing community in Denver and was often asked to train new staff.

In 2005 David met his wife Cheryl, a special education teacher from San Diego and they fell in love and were married in 2008. With Cheryl’s Masters Degree in Special Education and her training in Neuro deficits, she was able to see many characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome. After seeing a specialist, David was officially given a medical diagnosis of autism. Today David lives in San Diego with his wife and three adopted children and shares his experiences and knowledge with those in the autism community.

The Autism Whisperer

The Autism Whisperer is a title my wife gave me as I try to translate some of her special education students behaviors for her.

I would hardly call myself a Cesar Milan (the dog whisperer) Ironically, looking back at many of the Q & A’s I have done with parents, there is an all too familiar scene that plays out. If you are like me, a fan of the Dog Whisperer, I think you will follow this article without any trouble. When I watch the Dog Whisperer the one thing I see on almost every episode is Cesar ends up doing more training on the dog owners than on the dogs themselves. It turns out on most episodes that, most of the owners don’t understand the language of a dog and therefore always misread the dogs behaviors. Once Cesar has explained the dogs behavior and alerted the owners to the environmental problems the dog deals with, the problems the owners were up against almost disappear. I can honestly say, I find myself in a very similar situation with Autism.

Sometimes I see such an obvious problem that the parents can not see and this would only be because they are Neuro-typical. See, we witness all the time people expecting dogs to think like people when they teach them and give them commands. But dogs think like dogs. You want to teach a dog to do something you have to approach the training in a fashion the dog can understand.

I really don’t want you to think we with Autism are dogs. LOL. But, Autism is another language and is a different way of learning. Therefore, it requires knowledge on how to communicate and how to teach.

You can’t teach a person with Autism the same way that is taught to neuro-typical’s because they are not neuro-typical and like the dogs, they see the environment you are in much differently. Once you are as aware of your child’s surroundings as your child you start to see and hear the things that obstruct the communication between you. As you start to eliminate the obstructions you automatically open the communication channel and start to see your child responding/learning faster.